C++ and some type of SQL Database

Hi there. I am an experienced programmer from outside of the windows world. I have dabbled in C, but wanted to take the summer to delve deeper. I am curious if there is a certain SQL type database platform I should be looking to work with? Hopefully, something I can download free just to play around with tables etc.

In addition, I would appreciate any good books regarding interacting with databases in the C++ world.

SQLite is an excellent way to used SQL databases and is used by a lot of applications. There is the original SQLite source at http://www.sqlite.org/ and a Visual Studio System.data.sqlite (quick google for this will bring it up).
Its all well documented though

SQLite is very popular, but it is mainly used for handling local databases. When you use SQLite, the client is linked directly to the database engine; there is no client/server separation as there is with "traditonal" databases.

The most well known open source SQL servers are (none of which are Windows specific)

When is comes to the API, in the case of SQLite you often talk directly to the database engine, so you using it's native API.

System.Data.SQLite is an ADO.NET adapter for SQLite. Being .Net, it is for use from C++/CLI code, not (regular) C++. You could write a mixed-mode app with the ADO.NET related code marked as managed and the rest of the code as native. But regular C++ code can use SQLite's normal C API, or a C++ wrapper if you really want to. e.g.

Also, SQLite has become of interest to developers working on Windows 8 Metro apps. Metro apps have no way to communicate with remote databases via the normal route (i.e. the usual ODBC, ADO.NET route); they have to go via the cloud, or they're on their own with local file storage, which is exactly what SQLite provides.

Finally, I was not sure whether you were just interested in working with SQL API's or if you wanted to gain some basic DBA skills, too. But from a job point of view, this is the current demand according to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk